


little miss perfect

by pixiyella



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Anxiety Disorder, Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-16 01:34:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16944501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pixiyella/pseuds/pixiyella
Summary: There's a lot of pressure to continue to succeed once you've started. Sometimes, it's hard for Jazz to tell where her motivation ends and her anxiety begins.





	little miss perfect

Jazz paced around her room upstairs. She paced a lot, and she paced because she was worried, and she got worried because she couldn't stop pacing like some vicious cycle. Sitting on her computer screen, barely started on, was a paper with an impending due date. And yet for the life of her, she could not get herself to focus long enough to do it. She would sit down, she would try, but then she just couldn't. She thought that perhaps this was all finally becoming a problem, but shook it off. It couldn't be, she couldn't have a problem like that. She got A's, she did good, she was a model teenager.

It started in sixth grade. Or at least, she was pretty sure that was when it started. It was the first time she remembered it.

It was Jazz Fenton's first day of middle school, and she was scared. She had been the top of her class in elementary school, but a middle school was bigger, with even more kids. What if she didn't do as good? What if they were more successful than her? Maddie tried to reassure her (as did Jack, though he struggled a bit more to understand his daughter's worry), but nothing seemed to help. "It'll be better in a couple of weeks, sweetie," Maddie promised her daughter, kissing her on the head. "You're just a bit jittery because it's a new school, but it won't be that different."

Maybe part of it was just first day jitters. But the nervousness didn't go away. It would sometimes recede, but would come back full force with a high tide every time it did.

Her first full fledged attack came in eighth grade. She had to do a speech, and though she'd done public speaking a million times before, reading little essays she'd written and other such things, she had been dreading it this time for weeks. What if her peers laughed at her, or she messed up? This was for a competition, what if she lost, and no one thought she was smart anymore?

The day before, she'd locked herself in her room. An upset stomach, she told her mom later, but really, she'd been curled up in bed, with tunnel vision so bad everything was almost black, hardly able to breathe.

She still hadn't told anyone the truth about that day, not her mom, not her dad, not even Danny. 

She'd told herself for a long time that she had everything under control. She read self help books and learned breathing exercises. The attacks, when they occurred, weren't that often. But the had been getting worse. Finding out Danny was a crime-fighting half ghost, constantly in danger, and the stress of standardized tests, applying for colleges, the need to succeed- it all just seemed to drive her over the edge. But who could she tell? What if her parents thought less of her, what if, what if, what if?

Maddie knocked on her door. "Jazz, honey, dinner will be ready soon!"

Jazz took a deep breath. "Hey, mom. Can I... talk to you, for a second, actually?"

"Of course, sweetie, what's on your mind?"

Jazz sighed, taking a shaky breath, "That depends on how much time you have."


End file.
